1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to the art of refrigerated appliances, and more particularly to a refrigerator having a remote control method as a software task in a cloud-computing environment.
2. Related Art
Refrigerated appliances, for both commercial and domestic use operate a vapor compression cycle in which the closed-circuit refrigerant, liquefied from compression, transitions to gas within an evaporator unit, drawing heat through close contact with the refrigerator compartment. By design, heat of vaporization from the refrigerant's gas phase change effects the extraction of heat from the inside the refrigerator compartment to a condensing unit in order to maintain compartment temperature within a desired range.
The appliance components for the gas compression cycle include a compressor, a condensing unit, an evaporating unit along with an associated fan, and one or more sensors that measure temperature in the various compartments. Additional components may include an evaporator defrost heater, an airflow control damper, a recirculating fan.
A thermostat or a temperature control unit assures that the compartment temperature is around a desired set point by starting and stopping the compression cycle based on input from the sensors and using actuators such as relays. The appliance, control unit is also operating other tasks, such as regulating the airflow inside the compartments and starting defrost cycles during which the evaporator unit is heated to remove frost.
The temperature control method used in existing refrigerated appliances is a component built into the appliance at the time of fabrication. In those rare cases There its parameters other than the set points can be adjusted after field installation, the underlying control method algorithm cannot be changed and is limited by the computational resources available on board the control unit, even in more modern microprocessor-based controllers. Moreover, no factors directly relevant to energy consumption dynamics are taken in consideration.
Temperature control in refrigerators equipped with on-off, fixed speed compressors is typically achieved by means of the classical relay feedback closed-loop with other tasks such as the defrost cycle, performed on a time schedule. Advanced temperature control methods may incorporate adaptive strategies or sophisticated models to minimize energy consumption, but the additional cost in computational resources needed and the resulting appliance complexity, have limited advanced control methods only to some high-end industrial refrigeration systems.
Techniques such as cloud computing systems have begun to be utilized for a variety of applications. Cloud computing relocates the execution of applications, deployment of se ices and storage of data to a server farm, typically of premises and implemented as a service. Applications such as remote control software that have been running on conventional server environments have begun to be hosted in the cloud and utilized as services. Providing a service as hosted in a cloud platform results in an operational advantage, since management of hardware for each remotely controlled device becomes unnecessary by arranging the control server on a large-scale server farm. Among other merits, addition of resources depending on a load of the application is easily performed.